Interview: Waxed is Ready to Melt Faces at Reggies

What are you most looking forward to with the tour in general?

Luc Richards: I'm just looking forward to playing to fresh ears. I haven't been to any of these places except Chicago. 

Davis Haley: Yeah, we've all—like me and the other members of the band—have toured pretty extensively with other groups before. And this is the first time we'll all go out for more than a long weekend or five days.

LR: Kind of breaking ground for us. 

DH: So we're just fired up. We've been a band for so long, man. We're just fired up to get out and play and play to fresh ears, like Luc said.

Any plans for when you come to Chicago?

DH: Oh, man. There's this little cafe I love called—it's like a Cuban cafe. It's called Cafe Colao and it's like a little Cuban coffee place and breakfast place. And it's amazing. And I haven't gotten to go in years. That's one thing I'm really looking forward to.

I just dig Chicago, man, every time. My sister went to school there, she went to DePaul. And I got to go visit her some years ago. And I'm kind of familiar with that area. Every time I'm going to Chicago, man, I just have a great time. It's a good vibe.

LR: Yeah, we've got a handful of friends up there, too. Kayhan and Tyler Coburn, they play in Bursting. 

DH: Yeah, really sick band called Bursting.

LR: And then we've got buddies. They used to be in Chew, and now they play in Stress Positions. And they're all good homies of ours. They used to crash at our house here when they would play. And Chicago is really cool.

DH: Yeah, it's just good. We know a lot of people, good people. It's just a fun city.

LR: I’ve only been there the one time (when we played at) Cole’s Bar.

DH: Yeah, we had a great time. We went to some club down the road.

LR: Oh, like The Owl or something? 

DH: We went to some wild club down the road. We were there until about four in the morning.

LR: I don't really drink as much as probably everybody else, and I saved getting hammered for that night, but everybody in Soot and everybody in the rest of my band drank the night before. And so I was like, ‘Come get fucked up with me.’ I did guilt-trip them into going to the club with me. It was fun.

What's the game plan when you're in Chicago this time? Who's getting fucked up first?

LR: Well, I climbed a streetlight the last time we were there. And dangled off of it. So I’ve probably got to do that a couple more times.

DH: Yeah, that's got to be a tradition now.

LR: Maybe one in every city. I probably won't be getting that fucked up, though, because on tour my throat—my voice—has to survive. And when I'm drinking, I'm smoking.

DH: Yeah, you're smoking anyway.

LR: I'm smoking anyway. But when I'm drinking, I'm really smoking. And so I just have to survive. But I'll definitely try to climb a couple streetlights.

Let me know which cross streets, we'll get some pictures for the article.

LR: Yeah, 100%.

Let's go back to the history of the band. How did the two of you meet?

LR: Fifth grade, probably one of the first weeks of fifth grade, too.

DH: Yeah, fifth grade, we were in the bathroom. And I think one of us was singing a Ramones song. I think the other one was like, ‘Oh, nice—do you know the Ramones?’ And then we had this bit for a while where we would just communicate in Ramones song titles. But me and Luc didn't become really close until the next year. 

LR: I think it was the very end of fifth grade I spent the night at your house for the first time. Yeah, and then we got really tight. And we've been best friends ever since.

DH: We were just boys from there on. 

LR: And so when we started playing, we had both jammed together as kids. We were in the school rock band.

DH: Yeah, he had an electronic drum kit and we would jam together all the time. And then I joined a band for a while. And then I think we were about 15 or 16, and I remember Luc called me one time. He was like, ‘Dude, you should come over to our buddy Zach's house and let’s play, you play guitar.’ Because I had been playing bass in another band, but I'm a guitar player through and through.

LR: I think we were both originally guitar players. That’s one of the best-kept secrets ever, because I've always fronted this band. It breaks my heart.

DH: He'll be fine (laughs).

LR: Shut the fuck up (laughs). I think I sent him an audio recording of some riff that I had. And it was like, ‘Yeah, let's get together.’ Me, you, and Zach started a band.

DH: Our buddy Zach now plays drums in this band called Mystery Lights from New York that do really well. And he's lived up there for a long time. He was our original drummer and one of our best friends. So we just started jamming with him and playing shows. 

LR: West Coast punk type stuff.

DH: Skate punk, Black Flag, Agent Orange, bands like that.

LR: Yeah, and then we got better at guitar. It became more thrashy. We all got better and just started writing better shit, and then we've just kind of kept going. We take playing pretty seriously. I sit at home and flat pick and stuff, and we all play and listen to a ton of different music.

(Nashville is) fucking Music City. It’s ingrained in your being. Everybody plays. The bar is really high.

DH: You can be an absolute shredder and not even be the best player on your block in Nashville. People are monsters down here. You’ll go see a show and it makes you feel like, ‘We gotta step it up.’ People are just really good.

But with our new album that just came out last week, you really get a sense of all of our influences in one. We have a thing that we do that I don’t really feel like anyone else is doing right now. We’re really proud of this last record. Now we just say we’re a rock and roll band, but we’re a rock and roll band today. We’re not wearing bell-bottoms and trying to do rock shit.

LR: We just play what we want to play. It always ends up sounding like us. We've never really put any sort of restrictions on the type of song or genre. There's a fucking cock rock song on there. Then there's also fucking sludge beyond belief in there. I'm totally cool with that because you can really kind of put yourself in a corner if you're like, ‘No, we have to have this or we have to have that.’ It's like, ‘No, let's just have fun and write cool songs.’

I listened to the album and really liked it. Like you said, it’s got a cohesive sound to it. If I had to make a comparison—this is a very specific reference point—Louder Than Love by Soundgarden.

LR: We love Soundgarden.

DH: Yeah, we're huge Soundgarden fans. If you listen to Temple of the Dog or all that Seattle stuff that was going on, it kind of is like this amalgamation of all these different styles and stuff that those guys were into, and it kind of comes out as its own thing. And I feel like that's what we've really tried to do. But yeah, totally. We love Soundgarden. We love Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction—we're both huge Jane's Addiction fans. 

LR: That's how "Christ for One Day" came to be.

DH: Yeah, we were on a Jane's kind of trip. But also I was trying to be like Billy Gibbons in a way. I love ZZ Top. So it's all-encompassing.

LR: We've also always held on to that fuck-you hardcore…

DH: That punk rock attitude. I's what we came from. That’s just how we grew up.

LR: But we've also always wanted to show people—we've always been a really well-kept secret in town because we never got out regionally a ton. But everybody knew that, if you want a fucking kick-ass band, a ripping punk band, get this band. We’ve always had a chip on our shoulder—me and him probably more than the rest of the guys—about, like, ‘We fucking play, and we can be tasteful.’

DH: It’s always competitive with us, too. We want to win.

LR: And it was cool to feel like this came together very easily and just happened. It didn’t feel like we had to force much. We’ve gotten to the point where it's like, ‘Oh, we can really write some cool stuff.’ And as long as you don’t give a fuck about, like, ‘Oh, it’s not hardcore enough’ or shit like that, it’s whatever. A lot of love went into this album.

Speaking of influences and punk rock, I do have to rewind a little bit because I'm so curious. How did the two of you get exposed to the Ramones at such a young age?

LR: Well, my dad grew up in the L.A. surf hardcore scene. He was always into gnarly stuff. He probably thinks Ramones are fucking lame (laughs). I remember my brother was just kind of discovering punk rock, but mallbot shit. And I remember my dad pulled him aside and was like, ‘This is fucking lame. Go to Goodwill. Stop going to Hot Topic.’ I think the Ramones CD came from a Hot Topic purchase or something like that. And the Misfits box set. I remember my mom—I was in second grade—heard me singing "Last Caress" and almost fucking belted me.

DH: I remember one big thing—Luc's older brother Noel, who's the second guitar player in the band.

LR: He's five years ahead of us. 

DH: When we were in sixth grade, Noel gave Luc this little piece-of-shit red MP3 player, a knockoff MP3 player. And he had Electric Wizard, Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown EP, Damaged, Pissed Jeans—we love Pissed Jeans—Magrudergrind, all this rad shit.

We both knew all the classic rock. I worship AC/DC. I still do. We came up on Zeppelin, Sabbath, all the classics, Metallica—everything. We were versed in that stuff. And I remember Luc being like, ‘Dude, Noel gave me this fuckin’ MP3 player. Check this out.’

LR: Because he was my older brother, I got hit with it even earlier than that. He gave me an iPod Nano with a ton of shit on there. I remember loving Dead Kennedys from like third grade on. Descendents—we loved Descendents. And I remember being 11 or 12 and discovering Melvins.

DH: Yeah, Melvins was on that thing. I just remember there was this one holy grail MP3 player. 

LR: Damn, I wish I had that.

DH: I know. I was just thinking about that. It had all this rad stuff on it that was like, ‘Ok, I know the basics, and this is some really cool stuff that would be harder to find.’ And then off that, we’re YouTube generation kids. As soon as I knew anything or had a reference point, so much of my music taste came from spending hours on YouTube as a kid watching music videos, watching live videos, clicking recommended videos.

That’s always been the thing. Old dudes would be like, ‘Oh, you don’t know anything about Guns N’ Roses, brother.’ And it’s like, dude, I’ve seen every Guns N’ Roses video ever. AC/DC—’You don’t know shit about that, kid.’ It’s like, ‘Dude, I know everything about it. I grew up with the internet. Yeah, I could write a dissertation right now, dude.’ So, yeah, just that—the internet. But that little red MP3 player really changed the path of what stuff I liked and what I could get into. 

LR: One of my camp counselors tried to take that thing from me in the middle of listening to Richard Pryor or something. I was like, no, no!

What would you say is the typical songwriting process for a Waxed song?

LR: Generally speaking, me or Davis writes a riff. It starts with a voice recording on somebody’s phone in their bedroom. Then we shoot it to each other and are like, ‘What do you think?’ And then we take it to band practice and probably scream at each other for an hour or two.

DH: Although I stopped sending voice memos for the most part. What I do now is I’ll write a riff and work on it until I can play it decently. Then while we’re shooting the shit at practice, I’ll just turn my head down and play it. And if Luc is like, ‘What is that you’re doing over there?’ I’m like, ok, cool—this is a good riff and we can explore this. That’s how it’s worked a lot.

But me and Luc have totally sat down before and just played guitar together. Like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this little thing.’ And then we’ll just write stuff together. But it usually starts from one of us—or Noel—but for most tracks on this last album, it was kind of our thing. Then we all get together and work things out. Sometimes I’ll have a verse riff and a chorus, and then they’ll help me put it all together, or vice versa.

LR: Generally, most of the parts are there. Because we’re into the heavy style, a lot of our shit is in D since we play in D standard. So I’ll be like, ‘I’ve got this little riff I’ve been sitting on—this could be filler.’ Shit like that. And because of that tuning, we can all come up with pretty sweet riffs on the fly at practice. The only thing we really have trouble with is time. Sometimes we’ll write some shit that gets a little mathy, or turns around on itself.

And then as far as lyrics go, I usually wait until there’s no time left, and then under pressure, I usually bang that out.

DH: Well, it’s crazy because Luc’s gotten so good. I love the lyrics he writes. 

LR: I don’t want to write any bullshit.

DH: But it’s funny because sometimes I’ll be like, ‘Hey, just start writing words for that song.’ When we were about to start recording, we were like a week out, and I was like, ‘Do you have lyrics?’ And he was like, ‘No.’ I was like, ‘Dude, come on’ (laughs).

LR: But we had the songs. I didn’t have lyrics, and I started the night before.

DH: If I recorded a voice memo of a riff and sent it to Luc, I would name it something. And I think that helped a couple times when you’re like, ‘I just literally don’t know what to write about.’

LR: Sometimes that’s all I need—one word, a phrase—and from there I can jump usually pretty easy.

DH: So a few tracks on this record came from that. I’d come up with a riff, give it a dumb working title, do a vice memo, and then send it to Luc, and he’d write a whole song around it. That’s how “Secret to the Trade” happened. He just built a whole song around (that title). And it’s a really clever, fun song.

LR: Same with “Slow Land.”

DH: Yeah, “Slow Land” too. I had written a little opening verse, a poem almost. So it’s got this acoustic intro and Luc’s kind of talking over it.

LR: I wish you could see me writing in my room. Just like, ‘Fuck, no, that’s fucking stupid!’

DH: And I also have this weird thing when it comes to writing. Sometimes I talk to people about it and they’re like, ‘That’s weird.’ But I’ll have these visions—like artwork or something physical—and I’ll think, ‘How can I make a riff sound like that vibe?’ Sometimes I have weird ways of getting inspired.

With “Slow Land,” my dad had bought this beat-to-shit 1984 Corvette, a C4. It was the first Corvette to have a digital dashboard. It had this cool Knight Rider, Miami Vice kind of vibe.

I remember thinking, ‘That’s such a cool dashboard.’ Driving behind it at night, it just looks awesome. And I thought, ‘I need to write a riff that sounds like this,’ which is bizarre. But then that became “Slow Land.” I wrote it on acoustic, built the intro, and was like, ‘Oh, this could be cool.’ That riff was trying to come up with the musical version of the vibe of a digital dashboard on an ’80s Corvette.

Which song on this album would you say has the most interesting genesis?

LR: Well, “Big Blind” was supposed to just be for me. I wasn’t going to share that one.

DH: And I was like, what the fuck? You’re not going to start a new band. He played it and said, “I don’t want to do this with Waxed.”

LR: But remember, “Big Blind” was a whole different thing for a long time.

DH: Well, anyway, I’m trying to think if there’s a really good story behind anything. It’s all very personal—not that I wouldn’t want to share, it’s just hard to (explain). I don’t know if anything magically came together.

LR: I think “Christ for One Day” kind of magically came together. That sounded—I wouldn’t say way different, but we had a totally different guitar part lined up with that clean riff you can kinda hear real heavy in the background. 

DH: It stands out from the record a little bit.

LR: Like cock rock.

DH: Yeah, it’s got a Chili Peppers vibe almost, or like Porno for Pyros or something. But that was cool because in the studio, that was the first time for us where we were like, ‘This could go any direction.’ We weren’t married to anything. We got to work it out in the studio. And I think Noel was like, ‘It needs something else in the guitar.’ Our engineer had this cool old Jazz Chorus (amp), and we put this goofy, Chili Peppers funky right-hand lick behind it. And we were all like, ‘Whoa, that’s it.’

LR: But also “Murray”—that finale track—that one probably means the most to me. It wasn’t promoted as a single or anything, but I think it’s definitely the coolest fucking track on the record. I love them all—I love all my children, but that one—the song is about being fucked up and stressed out. I was having personal issues, blowing up on everybody.

The lyrics (weren’t) done. And that same weekend we got hit by fuckin’ three tornadoes, and the Jack White show was on the board. And my dog started having neurological issues that night. I’m sitting there writing the lyrics, (to record) the next day. I took my dog out to play, and he missed a stick, which he never did. He started walking in circles, which melted into seizures and all this crazy shit. So that song was about everything that was happening on every front. And in the middle of fucking recording my vocals, we got hit by these storms. Those are what inevitably threw him over the deep end. He had a stroke during those storms.

DH: It was crazy. The patio furniture at the studio was flying down the street. The outside of our friend’s house was getting torn up.

LR: It was like a white sheet in front of you. It was raining so hard you couldn’t see 20 feet out. So the power gets cut. We’re trying to finish the record. We also needed to touch up “Big Blind” and send that off so that we’ve got a single out for the Jack White show.

So the fucking stress I was trying to get across in that song, while it was being written, it was coming to fruition. It’s about finding inner peace in all that utter fucking chaos, and stop being such an asshole.

You referenced the Jack White show. I would love to know how that came about exactly and what that experience was like.

LR: Very scary.

DH: Yeah. Fucking terrifying. We just got an email one day. 

LR: We had crushed in front of one of his right-hand guys 

DH: More than once. It’s a guy we know at Third Man. 

LR: People talked shit and were like, ‘Oh, you just got the gig.’ But we definitely played really good sets in front of the right people. 

DH: We got an email one day and it was like, ‘You have 24 hours to respond.’ It was like 11 days before the show—not even a full two weeks. They asked, ‘Do you want to open for Jack White?’ We were like, ‘Fuck yeah.’

LR: Only dream I’ve ever had that came true. Two nights before that, I had a dream that I was onstage in a fucking chasm of a theater. We got onstage and it was like fucking black. I couldn’t see anything.

DH: It was a huge jump for us. I think the biggest show we played before was to maybe 600, 650 people. I think the Pinnacle was sold out at 4,500. 

LR: It was sick because we got the single out in time. People got a taste of what was on the horizon. I knew it was leagues above anything we’d ever put out.

DH: I remember that show, we pulled up and it was like Spinal Tap. We couldn’t find where to go. We were in the garage, our boy Zach was with us doing merch. It was like, ‘Where do we go? Hello, Nashville, let’s rock!’

We go in, and they’re like, ‘This is your dressing room.’ We have this fatass green room, fridge full of beers and food and stuff. They were like, ‘Yeah, the craft service is down that way.’ We were like, ‘First class!’ We were just laughing, enjoying every minute of it.

I never get nervous before shows. I like to play so much, I’m always like, I want to get out there, I want to get out there, and I never get nervous. This is the one time in my life—I was fine up until we got sidestage.

LR: Suddenly everybody stopped laughing.

DR: We get up sidestage, and I poke my head out from the side of the curtain, and you just hear this eerie murmur of 4,500 people. Everyone’s talking, but it’s quiet in a way. I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I come back in, and Noel—Luc’s brother, our other guitar player—he’s the definition of an Easter Island head. He’s just a rock. No emotion. Very stoic and stern. 

LR: He’s got these beady shark eyes. 

DR: He’s never gonna panic under pressure. Noel looks at me and goes, “I’d be lying if I said my heart wasn’t beating out of my fucking chest right now.”

And I was like, ‘Godammit. Why’d you say that?’ Then Jack’s stage manager looks at us and says, “You guys look a little out of sorts.”

LR: The other guy’s like, “Two minutes.” I realize I forgot setlists or something, so I gotta sprint back to the dressing room down the hall, grab this shit, and when I come back, they weren’t in the same place where I left them. I’m like, ‘Oh fuck, are they already on stage?’ I run back and catch them at the door.

DH: (The stage manager was) like, ‘Let’s do a little breathing exercise.’

LR: She’s telling us to put our tongues on the back of our teeth. We’re just like, ‘Oh god.’ Then it’s like, ‘One minute,’ and then they’re like, ‘Just go.’

DH: I remember we all kind of looked at each other for a like, ‘We’re gonna fucking die, but we’ll die together.’ And we go out, and Luc had the best line. Nobody knew who we were, Jack White fans didn’t know us. Our friends and family that came were like, ‘Fuck yeah,’ but we go out and I plug in my guitar and then I looked out in the crowd for a minute. It was just dark and hard to see, and then Luc just grabs the mic right before we start our first song and he just goes, “We are Waxed and this is our hometown.” That’s all he said, and then everybody blew up. When that happened, I was like, ‘We’re gonna be fine, we are Waxed and this is our hometown.” It was such a cool moment, and then we started playing and I had the time of my life.

LR: I had a terrible time (laughs). I couldn't hear.

DH: The sound was terrible. We can’t hear each other, the sound was not good, but I had a fucking blast because I was just like, ‘Dude, I got to pretend to be Angus Young for 30 minutes.’

LR: I was so anxious. I never play drunk (but) I was for sure drunk. I usually have like a beer or two to loosen up. I remember Mike, the dude from the record label, and being like, ‘Mike I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm like eight beers deep.’ He was just like ‘Oh my god, are you serious?’

DH: It was a lot of fun. Jack kicked ass and it was just a good experience.

LR: It was sweet because we played with Converge a week-and-a-half to two weeks later, and that was at the Basement East which is pretty big, obviously nothing compared to the Pinnacle, but still a room that would have normally had me a little nervous because of the size. We were so relaxed (because) we just did something that scared the bejesus out of us. 

DH: The thing with that show is, it was a great show, but as a musician, it was a little tough because of the sound and stuff. But like Luc said, it was one of those moments that was like, ‘Hey man if we could rise to the occasion for that…’ 

LR: I would do it again with so much more confidence, but I would sit there and make soundcheck last for three hours. I couldn't hear anything on stage. I was like, ‘Oh, we're shitting the bed maybe.’

You kind of already answered my last and favorite question, but do you have any other Spinal Tap moments you can share?

LR: So many it's not even funny. We're four idiots, you know, so it's very easy for these Spinal Tap moments to come about.

DH: I think we all kind of relish in that a little bit.

LR: I had a riff get destroyed at a show one time. It wasn't a Waxed show. I took a riff that is going to be a Waxed riff someday, it's like a thrash riff but then i slowed it down half-time for my rapper buddy. He was like, ‘Yo, I want you to come to this warehouse rave thing and play it live.’ I was like, ‘Ok, fine.’ 

So I show up and I was totally solid, confident playing in that room, but then my amp and everything—(I was) on the floor with everybody in the crowd, just like shoulder to shoulder with everybody. Our buddy Josh gets up and he starts playing like one of his most fucking cool songs, and he climbs up on one of those aluminum A-frame ladders that you can kind of extend in a bunch of different ways. The ladder is set up behind my amp. 

Somebody had a genius idea to shove the fucking ladder with him on top of it on on directly onto my gear. So my amp just fucking topples over. My (amp) head goes rolling—first of all, it's my brother's head and I'm standing there in the crowd with my guitar watching it unfold. There's a million fucking phone cameras all pulled out because he fell, and it was totally a fun moment but…

DH: Not to mention right before, Luc was like, ‘I don’t have a pick.’

LR: I didn't have a goddamn pick. I’m looking in my pockets and I was like, ‘Fuck.’

DH:  I was like, ‘I might have one in my truck, one second,’ and I run to my truck and I have no picks in my truck, so I’m in my truck with my pocket knife cutting up gift cards to make Luc a pick like with seconds until he has to play. 

LR: I held onto the guitar, and finally I'm like ‘Godammit.’ I fucking pick everything up and all the guts before the power supply goes in got yanked out and, God love her, my friend Samaya takes the shit and tries to push it back into my head and it just fucking fries it. I mean, anything you could have saved just got fried. Literally sparks shoot out of my amp and land in this girl's afro, and then all the power to the party got blown and it just went black in there. That was probably like my most Spinal Tap moment